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Do bilingual advantages in attentional control influence memory encoding during a divided attention task?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2015

NATALIE H. BRITO Open the ORCID record for NATALIE H. BRITO [Opens in a new window] ,
ERIC R. MURPHY ,
CHANDAN VAIDYA  and
RACHEL BARR
NATALIE H. BRITO*
Affiliation:
Columbia University Medical Center
ERIC R. MURPHY
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
CHANDAN VAIDYA
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
RACHEL BARR
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
*
Address for correspondence: Natalie Brito, Columbia University Medical Center, 1051 Riverside Drive, Room 4914C, New York, NY 10032, P: 646-774-6257nhb2111@cumc.columbia.edu
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Abstract

The current study examined if bilingual advantages in cognitive control influence memory encoding during a divided attention task. Monolinguals, simultaneous bilinguals, and sequential bilinguals switched between classifying objects and words, then were tested for their recognition memory of stimuli previously seen during the classification task. Compared to bilingual groups, monolinguals made the most errors on the classification task and simultaneous bilinguals committed the fewest errors. On the memory task, however, no differences were found between the three language groups, but significant correlations were found between the number of errors during switch trials on the classification task and recognition memory for both target and non-target stimuli. For bilinguals, their age of second language acquisition partially accounted for the association between attentional control (number of switch errors) and subsequent memory for non-target stimuli only. These results contribute to our understanding of how individual differences in language acquisition influence interactions between cognitive domains.

Keywords

divided attentioncognitive controlmemorybilingualism
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 621 - 629
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Franziska Richter for sharing her E-prime stimuli and program with us, Katherine Gamble for her E-prime consulting, and Herietta Lee and Kendra Whitfield for their invaluable help in collecting data. This research was funded by the APAGS Basic Psychological Science Research Grant awarded to Eric Murphy and by the APF Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz fellowship awarded to Natalie Brito.

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